BioShock PC patch, other fixes on the way

48 Comments by Justin McElroy Aug 24th 2007 8:05AM
Filed under: Hacks, PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Cult of rapture indeed! Some may have been having small doubts about paying their membership dues up front after some BioShock issues have poked their relatively insignificant heads up over the past few days. Now, after an announcement that all of those problems are either fixed or being worked on by 2K, the cult is really living up to its name.

Fans have probably been the most vocal about the field-of-view issue, which had widescreen players seeing less than those with fullscreen displays. Though 2K said that the choice was an intentional one, they've taken complaints into consideration and are working on a PC patch for the problem. (If you're in a rush, an unofficial hack is available here.) A similar update for 360s is "under investigation." Also an issue was a copy protection measure that limited the number of PCs a copy of the game could be installed on. That number is being upped, and machines will soon be able to be delicensed to free up a key. To help with these and other issues, a new team of support staff is being brought on to assist in the 2K forums.

[Via Shacknews]

Tags: 2kgames, bioshock, patches

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(Page 1) Reader Comments

Burt the skeleton: Aug 24th 2007; 8:09AM

Sweet!

Burt the skeleton: Aug 24th 2007; 8:13AM

Now all we need is a patch for the re-spawning enemies....only kidding!....or am i?! Maybe.

Neebs: Aug 24th 2007; 8:14AM

Good.

rdj75: Aug 24th 2007; 8:22AM

I would have never noticed any difference if it wasn't pointed out on so many of these online sites. I personally don't think its that big of a deal, but I guess I don't have an eye for this type of stuff. I am still loving this game though, I hope it wins game of the year.

blooh: Aug 24th 2007; 9:02AM

yay, i'll be able to see the S in Atlas's name...if they do fix it for xbox

Sunny: Aug 24th 2007; 12:57PM

That won't have anything to do with it. That's part of the HUD and not the FOV. The reason its cut off is the amount of overscan on your TV.

blooh: Aug 25th 2007; 12:13AM

what

zero: Aug 24th 2007; 9:11AM

The fact that 2K is responding to problems, however insignificant they might be, this quickly is refreshing and hopefully will be a trend that continues with this great game.

rivaldi22: Aug 24th 2007; 9:52AM

Yeah, it's really great to see that kind of support nowadays, especially when the complaints have not been the friendliest sort.

dukeatreides4ever: Aug 24th 2007; 9:15AM

Its amazing what gamers will complain about these days...

But I guess when you're game is receiving this much praise and hype (deservedly so) you've got to do anything to "please the customer".

Blazur: Aug 24th 2007; 9:28AM

This game is so damn cool.

JimJimBinks: Aug 24th 2007; 9:52AM

I hope when I get home today some issues will be fixed and I'll be able to play the game with sound.:(

I get sound all the way through the opening cutscene but as soon as that's over and the actual game starts I lose all sounds.

Jake: Aug 24th 2007; 11:03AM

Dude, that sucks. I was at my buddy's house last night and they have two TV's in the living room. One had the Twin's game on with sound, the other was him playing Bioshock without sound.

If you take away the sound, Bioshock isn't very good. You just have to have sound for that game. You can play Madden, Halo, Gears, Oblivion, and other popular games without sound, but not Bioshock. You just freakin' need to hear the crazy shit in that game.

Tom: Aug 24th 2007; 1:37PM

Are you using stereo or 5.1? You can change it in the settings. Maybe that's the problem???

JimJimBinks: Aug 24th 2007; 2:16PM

Tried it both was. Couldn't get it working. Stuck at work now but I'm gonna mess around with it more when I get home. I'm starting to wish I opted for the 360 version.

tlozwarlock: Aug 24th 2007; 9:53AM

Any halfway frequent PC game player will know that most PC games have config files that can be modified. The FOV problem is readily fixable by the simple task of editing the Default.ini config file in the Builds\Releases folder. There's a parameter under the Engine.Game section called, believe it or not, Fieldofview. Granted, I'm sure that's what the hacks are modifying.

Of course those with the console version might be SOL until 2k releases a patch.

hvnlysoldr: Aug 24th 2007; 10:07AM

(in b4 hvnlysoldr) Pirates wore eye patches for night vision. Nice to see they're fixing complaints.

borland502: Aug 24th 2007; 10:07AM

If they patch the shader problem I'll be content. I don't want to stand in the march of progress, but if my x850 is capable of running the game in raw power, then it should.

A lazy port from the 360 is no excuse for arbitrarily shunning part of the PC population.

Shawn: Aug 24th 2007; 10:17AM

A PC population that nevertheless sold more copies on PC than 360 in Europe. Apparently the PC version has done extremely well even here in the States too, and that's not counting STEAM or D2D. It's good to see that support is being hired, I would love to see the mod community get behind this game.

Jake: Aug 24th 2007; 11:00AM

Can somebody please explain to me how "fixing Bioshock's widescreen" is anything different than simply zooming the camera position out slightly? What if we don't want to be zoomed out insignificantly and would rather stay where it is at?

Orangecoke: Aug 24th 2007; 11:00AM

I hope there aren't too many people skipping this game just for that widescreen issue - that would be a shame because the game is absolutely brilliant and a must-play experience.

Final Prototype: Aug 24th 2007; 11:03AM

I ended up going with the 360 version. When I tried the demo on my new laptop (dell 1520), it ran perfectly through the intro movie and then when the plane crashes and the screen goes black.... it stays black.

This is because the rushed nvidia drivers for 8 series cards apparently do not support my laptops 8600M GT... I didn't screw with the settings at all because this should be able to run at full specs.

Anybody else have this card or the same problem?

saintalfonzo: Sep 10th 2007; 12:59AM

I just got a sony AR570 laptop with maxed out specs and bioshock a couple weeks ago. I am getting a black screen after the intro and haven't gotten to play this f$#%ing game at all. The graphics card is an Nvidia Geforce Go 8600GT and I've called NVidia, 2K, and Sony and none of them are any help at all. This machine should be able to run this game in high res without a question. Is there something I'm missing here?? I would greatly appreciate some help!!!!

False: Sep 19th 2007; 2:14PM

I had the same problem with my 8600m - the trick is that the patches from NVIDIA do work, they just won't install. I found a modded .inf file on laptopvideo2go.com - all I had to do was replace the .inf that was in the NVIDIA driver's extract folder and wah-lah - game suddenly runs perfectly with quick saving/loading and full DX10 support.

Alternately you can simply play the game in DX9 by giving the short cut a command to play in DX9 only, that is less than ideal though.

hans: Aug 24th 2007; 11:17AM

I beat the game (360 version) on hard and never got the achievement for betting the game on hardest difficulty. WTF?!
i hope that gets addressed.

Atilac: Aug 24th 2007; 12:37PM

I want to sander cohens room and didn't get the achievement either.

The Boo: Aug 24th 2007; 11:17AM

I almost feel bad that these guys have to go so far out of their way for such a petty problem but I certainly won't mind the fix.

Jose: Aug 24th 2007; 11:17AM

Finally! I suppose. I'm just going to keep playing because the game really is awesome anyway. I just hope they have all the bugs fixed by the time I finish my first play through, so that I can play through it again (this time harvesting all the little sisters for their sweet sweet Adam that I can) without the friggin' top and bottom of my screen being cut off!

razer: Aug 24th 2007; 12:47PM

I'm so glad I went with the 360 version.. This is why PC gaming sux!

I've already finished the game and saw no problems what so ever.. Smooth as butter!

Shagittarius: Aug 24th 2007; 1:27PM

PC gaming sucks beacuse its getting the fix first for a problem that exists on both the PC and 360.

Yeah it sucks to get things first. Just ask Sony.

Jeff: Aug 24th 2007; 1:13PM

Amazing game, and as far as I can tell, an amazing company.

I wanttt multiplayerrrrr.

Residentevil72501: Aug 24th 2007; 1:33PM

I beat the game in a day! And i never noticed any of this crap. Well not on the 360 anyway

OldKingCole: Aug 24th 2007; 1:50PM

When I play my copy (360 version), it keeps freezing for a second or too, and it does it pretty often. None of my other games has this issue, and when it freezes, no disc reading noise is made. Will this get patched too?

Mike: Aug 24th 2007; 2:55PM

uh... oldkingcole.. Its not the game. You're 360 is overheating most likely.

Mike: Aug 24th 2007; 2:58PM

OH.. and this sentence is worrisome:

"under investigation."

Sounds like it's a slim chance the 360 is getting the patch to me.

michael: Aug 26th 2007; 8:43PM

anyone know when the audio patch will be here for bioshock?

Kurtis: Aug 26th 2007; 9:23PM

Ok, this is all good news. But what about the gamers like myself, who still can't get sound after the opening plane crash scene?? Why would 2K focus on something as insignificant like a widescreen issue when some of us still can't even play the game yet? If they want to make a patch make one to fix the sound issues in the game... geez.

Kurtis: Aug 26th 2007; 9:25PM

Man... when will there be an audio patch? Or will there ever be one? And where could we find it? All i want to do is enjoy BioShock... :(

Janyse: Sep 21st 2007; 9:14AM

I don't know if anyone's posted this yet, but all I did was turn on campatibility mode to Windows Xp Service Pack 2, and the sound began to work. I'm assuming the people who have sound problems all have Vista.

ZippyDSMlee: Aug 27th 2007; 6:33PM

360 is having its own set of troubles from shuttering to freezing to lock downs,its not a pretty sight.

the PC seems to have 3 times as many issues shaders/drivers begin the worst sound being 2nd,I am hoping its shaders that is causing it to crash I was tweaking the demo for 2 or 3 days to see what was making ti crash,the high detail shaders and post processing did not like running for long but there are also a slu of mini glitches that need to be dealt with.

As for the game itself tis not bad their setting some of the best I have seen however it was made for the mainstream and it shows at best its a 8.

dragon: Sep 4th 2007; 4:27AM

can any one HELP on install patch downloads then said wrong signatur did work but had problem now will not re install

KIRILL: Sep 10th 2007; 3:02AM

Fuck you, fucking 2K!!! How much longer shoulda wait for a godforsaken patch! you stupid bitches, FIX IT!!!!!

Heater: Sep 20th 2007; 6:40PM

Video crap get this fixed its like a big scam

Terence Robert Hyde: Sep 27th 2007; 3:03PM

Nice language just whats needed to ge a response from 2k
(not)

Heater: Sep 20th 2007; 6:40PM

This is freaken gay i waisted my money on the pc bioshock game i cant play its video is screwed right up from the get go ,, cant use mouse on option screen an when i finally get it to start the first stage is a blurr do to video problems with my widescreen ..Just crap i want my cash back

JackAss: Sep 22nd 2007; 3:18AM

I bought Bioshock about two weeks ago, and so far everthing is going great, the exception being the widescreen issue. To Everyone with an ATI card, i feel for you, but keep in mind the game was developed with nVidia, so ATI has to try and keep up with their drivers. Im running XP SP2 ,and twin GeForce 7600gt's in SLI and it looks AMAZING. I guarantee the sound issue and some of the other issues for those of you with newer computers, and g-cards, are really Vista Issues. I uesd to work in Geek Squad, and i can count the number of random ass problems that people would bring in their computers in for that were all vista issues at the core of it.

Basically, be patient, and remember Unreal, Quake, Doom, Fear, and yes, even Half life , and countless others had issues when they first came out, be patient, and the patches will come.

Dirty`: Sep 25th 2007; 2:59AM

All of the complaints in this post are laughable. The widescreen issue is a Joke and the type of people that would bitch about that will find something to bitch about no matter what. The sound issue would be a problem but it seems that is an issue with the system (vista, drivers, soundcard.) not the game itself. All I know is that I am running a relatively low end system (7800GS AGP, 2.4ghz P4, 2G of 4200, onboard sound) and have the game Cranked up to full (minus DX10 Obviously) and have absolutely no problems. Some of you people need to be a little quicker to diagnose the problem then just go to the manufacturer for a quick fix and bitch when its not available. Well Ill stomp my rants now got big daddy's to kill and Adam to harvest.

Dirty`: Sep 26th 2007; 10:16PM

AHHHH, No body told me about the part were big daddy gets pissed and rampages through my tower compleatly destroying my 7800! DAMN THAT RYAN INDUSTRIES AND THERE SINISTER WAYS, DAMN THEM TO HELL!!

Good thing I only buy B.F.G Graphics cards and they have the absolute hands down best warranty and support Ive had from any company ever. Lets see how there warranty hold up against big daddy damages

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